Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

minet is the Amiga-specific side to
the Internet. Some bright spark out
there decided that all the best share•
sere programs, graphics, sounds, samples
area the other mass of material gust sitting
ewe in cyberspace deserved an official
anwase as a set of four CDs at a very reasonam
once. It has to be said, the end result LS
rarer impressive.
Armnet Set 1 is the culmination of this idea,
asnwig in a satisfyingly chunky box with four
elver discs sitting inconspicuously in their
mots, Amiga delights bursting from each
7oove. For people worried about value for
•roney, there's no need to - for the hungry,
neigh greedy user, there are four megabytes
at data here to be pillaged, abused and used.
With 12,500 separate archives, you're not
'ping to be bored with this for quite some
So what exactly is the whole collection
-
-answer
in one page - there's that much on
a:fter.
Paint programs, sound modules, rayi-
da
:reators, 3D objects, icon replacements,
e canimbrushes,
games (both shareware and
ue
•=nmercial demos). drivers for hardware,
p d xmmunications progs such as envoy net-
og
work software. SaarAG and Fish disks, develcement
software and more and more and
fr
-
? a
" Aar downloads so you can access the good
Tp
oguff
immediately - there's something here for
everyone h
r
ai
SEARCHING
e
tc
.
's
This amount of tiles may sound daunting to
P
cxunder s . through, but the cpmpilers have also
l
come as
up with an excellent system for finding
out
u
n p exactly what you want. On each disk is a
full s
ir
index for both the particular CD in your
drive ,
me
and a global index listing everything on
the t four discs.
pa
h
od
To make things even simpler, there is a
local e and global search system where you
s
enter r a key word such as Imagine and the
sh
computer e subsequently hunts through the
ie
catalogue a quickly, presenting you with a rundown
be
r of any files that are connected. On one
Side, lt
there's an archived file and on the other
e
is e s a description of that particular file.
c
q,
With some compilation discs you may well
h
get us
a huge amount of data to surf through,
a
but et
there's invariably hair pulling as the nght
r
viewers se
need to be set up and assigns fiddled
with
t
r to make many of the programs work,
And s
ie
here is another strength of the Aminet
discs. o
o
f
n g
The system has been set up so various
viewers t and other facilities that aid in the
tr
h
oa
e
m Make5 5P115P
o
Another s enticing aspect of this collection
t is that once you've spent the cash,
it's p going to be cheaper in the long term
than
o
downloading all the stuff from the
Internet. No enflamed phone bills, dodgy
p
phone lines or slow loading because of
-
spooling large amounts of graphics for
viewing. Indeed, this collection makes
perfect economic sense at only C29.99.
The otnrction'S versatility I. apparent.
View lonagine.created artwork or...
Nam Phill05 TeUIPUJ5 111771
.
aget 170
. -S
e t 1
t h e W
running, listening and viewing of flies are
already in position. In most cases, when you
select the file you want a menu appears offering
1 to edher run/show the file there and then
or extract it to RAM.
More u toften
than not the system works surprisingly
well and quickly. Run an animation,
flick tacross e to a game and then extract a file
into RAM that can be used in Imagine as an
object r - lthis
kind of versatility is satisfying and
relatively hassle tree, leaving you to enjoy the
goods y on offer. It has to be said, though. that
there are limes when things don't go to plan -
the pcomputer
crashes or the file you have
selected consistently fails to load up or
extract. a
In fairness to the collection, a substantial
part rof
this data is shareware and public
domain, so there has to be a certain amount
of leeway k granted to the compilers for any
small glitches - PD and shareware material
doesn't e receive the play testing that most
commercial software gets, so expect some
oversights, d mistakes or bugs. In some cases,
using a file manager such as Directory Opus
can help sort any cumbersome files. If you
Ron the
isearch motto
many a key
word and me
index la tithed
with all the
relevant Mao
101 maq IOW need another W-1111111 again
tifin
51
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Pon • mooed. —
r
Amigo Computing
MAY 1995
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...hunt down a ha rdwa re drive r
you've ahvays needed
GRAPHICS
Ease of use 9
Implementation
9
Value for money_ _10
Overall
9
n\
only have a slight interest in the Amiga and
want to find out all about its ins, outs and
capabilities, you can't go far wrong with this,
The Aminet Collection is one of the most
impressive packages I've had the fortune
to come across, and I look forward to giving
the next selection a glowing review if the
makers can keep this standard up. Highly
recommended.
The bottom line
Product: The Aminet Set 1
Ptice: E29.99
Supplier: 17 bit Software
Tel: 01924 366982
89